The Nobel Laureate playwright’s first Hungarian premiere is produced by PanoDrama, an organisation devoted to producing new international plays in Hungary and new Hungarian drama abroad. Stecken, Stab und Stangl was voted Best Play of the year in 1996 and is Jelinek’s first theatre work directly inspired by social events. A racist’s bomb murdered four young Roma in the Austrian Burgenland in 1995, just because “they made the mistake of not putting on in time the looks and names of our acquaintances”. Jelinek stands against the crime committed by a racist, who is in the minority, but condemns even more the chorus of the hypocrite mourners of the majority, for thanks to them life goes on as if nothing had happened.

The award-winning Austrian-Hungarian film director, Robert Pejo’s first stage work draws on the theme of his film Dallas Pashamende, but its form is defined by the poetic text, barely divided into roles by Elfriede Jelinek. Beyond the - in Hungary - painfully timely subject matter PanoDrama’s production examines one of the most exciting phenomena of the Hungarian theatre, the appearance of young film directors on Hungarian stages from Mundruczó to Gigor.

In a theatre culture of rather few outstanding contemporary playwrights, Hungarian stages offer almost no reaction to some of the most crucial issues of today’s society. Even devised pieces tend to refrain from discussing the most burning issues - in a country famous for its political theatre during the Communist regime, when artists knew how to wink at the audience and spectators knew how to read the critical political thought between the Shakespearean lines.

“Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”

Luis Buñuel

I never liked political theatre. But what I would like even less is not talking about what’s going on in Hungary today. That we perform Chekhov and Feydeau as if murderous racism weren’t back on the streets and as if we weren’t forced to read slogans from the thirties on the walls and in some papers.

It is the whys and wherefores that we are searching for in these three days. But one thing is certain: Hungary never faced its fascist past. Just like Austria hasn’t until very recently. And since Hungarian dramatists don’t yet seem to want to write about what is happening around them, it is with Elfriede Jelinek that we try to find the cause and start discussing possible solutions.

180 forced labour worker Jews were humiliated and slaughtered by Countess Battyhány and her company in 1944 at her castle in Rechnitz in the framework of a jolly hunting party.

The Hungarian countess was never tried for this monstrous deed, nor were her fellow-partiers. The mass grave still hasn’t been found.

10 March 2010 Wednesday

18h Roma/Non-Roma - where does the hatred come from?

ten-day workshop led by the TIE teacher and actor Yvette Feuer

The actor and TIE teacher Yvette Feuer has been working with for almost a year including all age groups from small children to young adults. PanoDrama commissioned her to do a ten-day workshop with young Romanies from Barcs, Pécs, Hétes and Kaposvár and young people of all colours from Budapest in the theme of hatred and discrimination against the Roma.

20h Elfriede Jelinek: Rod, Staff and Crook

rehearsed reading

Preceding the April premiere of PanoDrama we organize a workshop and present its result this evening about the four Hungarian Roma murdered by a racist in Burgenland.

PanoDrama's concept of workshopping this wonderful dark comedy for three with nine women has proved a hit in Hungary, so now we have repeated the exercise with a group of German actresses in the framework of Nordwind Festival. The one-week workshop was co-led by the Swiss translator/director Martina Marti, who has been living and working in Finland for years and PanoDrama's founder Anna Lengyel. The most interesting lesson we learned was how similarly Finnish and Hungarian people seem to approach a Myllyaho-play, taking their cue from the situations and the characters which the Finnish playwright is so famous for, while the initial German approach seemed to regard these texts more as only that, wanting to work against the situation, but then quickly got the hang of the playwright's special sense of humour.

The presentation was fairly full in the foyer of HAU1 and the audience enjoyed the evening clearly.

Nordwind Festival focuses on Nordic theatre and as such has a Finnish focus in common with PanoDrama. A Smeds-evening shed light on the brilliant director and playwright Miss Lengyel worked with while still at Krétakör.

PanoDrama is an organisation devoted to the better trafficking of new drama between countries, founded by the dramaturg and producer Anna Lengyel. Its mission is to find great new plays and make them available for future productions.
PanoDrama commissions translations, produces staged readings and publishes plays in an informative booklet on the given theatre culture and contemporary drama Playtexts in Context.
Contact: alengyel@yahoo.com

Coming Up

Magamról

PanoDrama was founded by the dramaturg and independent producer Anna Lengyel, devoted to the better trafficking of new drama between countries, founded by the dramaturg and producer Anna Lengyel. Its mission is to find great new plays and make them available for future productions. PanoDrama commissions translations, produces staged readings and publishes plays in an informative booklet on the given theatre culture and contemporary drama Playtexts in Context. Contact: alengyel@yahoo.com
panodramaplays@blogspot.com